Friday, February 28, 2003

Apparently the Ad Council is having its revenge on me for mocking their public service advertising. Victoria pointed out that apparently my weblog is giving off ALL the wrong signals, and blogspot's automatic advertising toy has saddled me with an adult site as an ad. Embarrassing, but not surprising. Readers of this will have seen my posts about how wrong database collection and extrapolation (TiVo or Amazon style) would result in faulty results. Well, here's your next example.

Now that I know this is happening, I think the only thing to do is to screw with its head. It may take me a while to figure out how to do this, or balance out the existing hit rate, but it will be entertaining.

I'm really embarrassment-proof on this point these days. It would be impossible to top the total inappropriateness that I get any time I go into a Chinese restaurant.
Almost all Chinese restaurants use the same placemat, explaining the Chinese Zodiac, how certain people of certain years (4 years apart) are compatible, while others (6 years apart) are incompatible. Fine, I'm Year of the Ox. Problem is when they wrote the translation for my year everything went wrong. In every Chinese restaurant with those placemats mine reads: "Compatible with cock and snake. Sheep will bring you trouble."

Thursday, February 27, 2003

Fred Rogers died today. If you grew up in the shadow of Pittsburgh, and were of a certain age, when Pittsburgh advertised itself as a city of neighborhoods, you'll remain convinced that the Neighborhood of Make-Believe is somewhere in there. Probably around Mount Oliver, no one's really sure where that is. The T has to run there, though these days, you'll probably have to wait at Steel Plaza. And you have to hope they broke the news to Daniel gently.

Wednesday, February 26, 2003

Defending playoffs.

I won't argue with what is said in favor of round robin, since there is value in that statement. However, I think that the premises laid out aren't the complete set of assumptions. To my mind, we are omitting the psychology of tournaments. It is not unreasonable to note that teams play emotionally differently when there is nothing to play for, and round robin is often little more than single elimination. One loss and you lose your power to affect the outcome to your favor. The problem is, you now have the rest of the tournament to play. This is the trap. We'd love to assume that a game that would happen before that would produce the same results, that people would function as machines. Doesn't work. Note that this doesn't necessarily make playoffs any better or worse, it merely blurs that division, and spreads out the disappointment over a longer period. If the only concern of the tournament is who won, that's fine. If you actually have interest in the order of teams all the way down, spreading out that effect is not a bad idea.

The other argument that's missing is tied in with the "tournament end as event" issue, but it's more practical and less emotional. That is the issue of being able to run a tournament, and end it practically. If you are going to award prizes, having a playoff allows you to get people together to watch the finals, while you get the stats together. Good value. It also allows the hosts to break down rooms, and organize equipment so that people don't lose their buzzers. If the buzzers and clocks get moved to a central location, you won't have people frantically emailing on Monday asking who has their stuff. It also helps prevent the bizarre but commonplace phenomena where teams leave without even finding out, or caring, who won. Are all these accomplishable without playoffs, somewhat. But a playoff facilitates this a lot better.

Basically, the way I see it, round robin alone does one thing very well, produce a winner with minimum fuss. If that is your only consideration, that's fine, no one will fault you. If you have other additional goals, then playoffs may be better. I for one, think that playoffs, or more accurately, what goes on around playoffs, allow you the possibility of social interaction, which if people were more familiar with each other, might have reduced a mini flamewar between screen names, to a better discussion.

The fundamental problem: there are a number of formats which are fair, there is no absolute one format. Choose what works.

Let's see if this works. The reason I'm wondering is I thought I was smacking right into blogrolling's apparent Achilles' heel, the single/double quote. Turns out it's not that particular problem that was preventing me from coming up pinging, no, that's just general laziness on my part. Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Meanwhile, Jason suggests jamming Daypop's word burst feature, with an entry in your weblog featuring the word Jabberwocky. There. I've done it. Look back to my 2/21 entry to see me wondering when someone would do something like this. Let's do this, and then see if we can do anything about "fraught."

Incidentally, I feel bad because I probably put his site under unnecessary scrutiny. During Sunday dinner celebrating my dad's birthday, I pointed out that I knew Jason had his lady in town, when his mother, sitting across from me, didn't even know about her. So now, I assume he's getting unwelcome family feedback. Somehow, I know that's going to come back to bite me. Don't know exactly how, but...

Monday, February 24, 2003

Depth first versus breadth first.
Supposition: If there were such a thing as a Benet's for the sciences, the discussion on Yahoo/quizbowl wouldn't be happening. Just a thought, but if you had a single book that gave, not necessarily an in-depth guiide to all the sciences, but which covered a lot of material in ALL the sciences, say to the survey course level, while remaining accessible to the layman. You'd have something that people would be able to look at, absorb, and at least judge whether material for a question was good or bad, easy or hard, obscure or common. We could argue about something's comparative value, because there would be a baseline. Now the problem is that no single work like that exists for science. It doesn't even exist for some subdisciplines of science. (To a certain degree it exists for history of science, but that's only going to get you so far, and a lot of science players don't call that science at all. I do somewhat, only because one can learn a lot about science by how it got from discovery A to discovery B.) Adding to this problem, you have the problem of progressions. Most science and technical curricula march along a series of prerequisites and tracks of classes, to a much heavier degree than outside the sciences. So the really interesting things for writing questions about them won't be accessible to the general public. On the other side, those in the humanities may be better able to take a variety of classes, but that very variety ensures that a lot more is considered fair game. When the science major is confronted with this, and is left with perhaps one elective per semester to cover that scope, you can see where that's equally problematic. In both cases, the best elective either side can take to understand the other side is another packet.

That's why I tend to file the science debate under "intractable issues of quiz bowl." It's the same fight I ran into in the early '90s. I guess I got fluid mechanics into the distribution, but I couldn't get people to get the answers right when they write them. (2100-2300, almost never 4000!)

Saturday, February 22, 2003

I've been shocked in past days to find the word "fraught" appearing with frightening regularity in ordinary web discourse, among my small circle of friends. So much so, that I tend to wonder if we may have sparked a meme that will spread beyond quiz bowl (I'll call such a quest "fraught" right here, and avoid the rush). So while following Matt's entry about the flow of referrers, I was shocked to find "fraught" pop up here. Probably not a likely correlation. But I will be interested to see if this (go Big Red) can show me if there is a usage spike.

The first seeds have sprouted. Spring begins. I garden, or really, I let things take up window space in my apartment, and in exchange, I collect rent in the form of leaves. Thus, with the exception of a succulent that my aunt gave me, everything I grow must be edible. So currently, there is a two-foot long tray of various salad greens, and two seedling trays of dill and basil sitting in the warmth of my laundry room.

The Tampa Bay Yachtsmen will take the field this year, unfortunately, they're taking a minefield.
Ah, spring training begins, and with it, the quest to field the worst team continues. The suck league opened up yesterday. Led by Skipper Derek Bell, hopefully the Yachtsmen, last year's Monongahela Trawlers, will repeat. One has to love a league where Rey Ordonez is a likely first round pick. Amazingly, they may be the better team in Tampa. This is just too many people associated with the Pirates. Chuck Lamar used to work for the Bucs, Bonifay used to work against the Bucs, and Thrift seems to have made his entire career on one trade with the Bucs. This much suckitude in one place could cause the Tropicana Dome to implode (glad it's not inflated up like the RCA Dome)

This looks disturbingly cool. With apologies to Bill Simmons, I really want to see them do a Moochie Norris one. And Latrell Sprewell, because the "toy Spree as choking hazard" joke never gets old. And if you look at their draft, apparently Lego Elgin Baylor (indistinguishable from the real one) picked third.

Wednesday, February 19, 2003

In its own way, the upcoming is the most important weekend in quiz bowl. This is the one weekend each year, in which the members of the circuit are able to directly influence the growth of the circuit. Every other way, you have to work through some sort of intermediary, the mail, the advisor, the whims of people. This week we can demonstrate how the bad stories that come in advance of us, are misconceptions. This week we can show the variety of options out there, the opportunities everyone can take, and the network that the circuit provides. If you're going, show those teams out there what the circuit can offer, what events are available for the rest of this year, how we can help in hundreds of little ways, and how we want them to succeed. Most of all, let's show them that this weekend is not the endpoint of the game for them, but only one step forward. Let's get them connected to the circuit.

Mike Tyson-Clifford Etienne has become complete and utter comedy. I was reminded of a bit in a Marx Brothers movie: Chico and Harpo have been hired to trail a guy, and Chico describes their week's progress thusly (quoting from faulty memory):
"Monday, he fool us, he no show up. Tuesday, we fool him, we no show up. Wednesday, we fool each other, nobody show up."
I'm just wondering (hopeful) that we may get Mike Tyson completing this salute to classic comedy by reenacting the Monty Python sketch where the guy fights himself in the boxing ring.

Well, if the story saying that the Pirates have signed Reggie Sanders is correct, it looks like the offense set for this year. Not great, but hey, we're not the Brewers.

Tuesday, February 18, 2003

Yesterday was interesting, I still don't know whether we had a snow emergency at work. I tried calling in at about 8:30 to see if we had been called off. No answer. Same deal with email. I then tried to pull my car out of the snowbank. After about an hour of trying to get the snow clear of the car, I simply went back up and bagged it. Lacking a shovel at the apartment finally caught up with me. So I came back up, made breakfast, and laid down. Bad move. When I got up again, it was 6pm. The irony of this is, coming in today, no one commented on me being out, no one emailed, and no one really even mentioned the storm. On one hand, it could be that I'm not alone, and no one got in, or it could be that no one wanted to talk about it, and really, I'm not essential enough to be noticed if I go missing. Ah, it's paranoia like that that keeps me sharp... or something.

And now a comedy bit only for people who name their teams funny: Read this article carefully, then read the footnote below.

Comedy for those who enjoyed the history of French Warfare, the Times of London includes in this article one of those things you always wanted to know: How exactly would one say "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" in French?

**You don't suppose they'll replace him with some guy who looks just like Colin Ferguson?

Monday, February 17, 2003

I don't understand how we managed to avoid the snow, but we did, and when I woke up this afternoon, I discovered we only JUST beat it. I'm looking at somewhere between 8 inches now and maybe that again coming in by the time it's done. This didn't stop me from walking to my local supermarket to pick up some meat for dinner (along with milk and bread, in case this continues to nail us down), though, the guy busy sweeping the sidewalk was shocked.

I think it's obvious now, and the Orange alert wasn't helpful. Al Qaeda must now have the weather dominator.

A day like this gives me the opportunity to start moving the pieces into place for the next couple months, and I tried to do that a bit. Started planting stuff for my office. Started transcribing questions that I had written on paper. Started trying to figure out how to get maximum coverage so we make sure graduating seniors.

Tuesday, February 11, 2003

Hip deep in the subtext again.
Forgot to note that Pennsylvania got dragged kicking and screaming into the 20th century last Sunday, as now 65 liquor stores in the state are allowed to sell on Sunday. It wasn't easy to pull this off, since the primary mover against it wasn't the expected religious objection, it was the state employees who would now be forced to work Sundays.

S'anyway, the new ads that ESPNRadio is running on their internet feed have to be the saddest, most ham-handed, point-obscured, piles of advertising tripe this side of ads for the Pennsylvania Lottery. The two that are the worst are:

1. An ad where a woman calls up the "Art Deprivation hotline", worried that her child has apparently begun convulsing. (If you read that sentence again, you'll see where I'm going with this). Apparently her child was just all normal and then... The guy on the other end of the line hears some cheesy pseudo-80's music in the background and asks the woman if her child might be dancing. NO! she screams, she knows dancing and THAT's not dancing.
Okay, lets blow this sucker up. First of all, if the point of the ad, as their tag line implies is to get kids involved in the arts at an early age, they leave two hanging curves: Is the mother unable to recognize dancing and thus deprived of the arts herself, or is it that the child is so deprived that she dances like an idiot? If it's the former, how is the woman able to recognize to call the ART DEPRIVATION HOTLINE, and then not recognize art deprivation. If it's the latter, this organization would be better served calling itself "Citizens for Funk" and be done with it. Much better ad:
"Hello, did you know that three out of ten people in America today cannot get down. And another two in ten are unable to get funky below their waist. For these funk-impaired and funkapalegic, there is hope..."

2. Meanwhile another ad opens with this word picture of a guy making a terrific drive down the fairway. After telling this story it jarringly shifts to tell us that "Only you're not on the fairway, you're daydreaming in the cart. You can't move because you didn't have your seatbelt on." Outside of the fact the verbal jumpcut just confuses the average listener, there's this image I keep getting from this ad. Who exactly is the cruel bastard who's dragging this guy out on the course and leaving him in the cart while they play 18 holes? Why don't we just openly taunt our obviously remorseful friend?

Monday, February 10, 2003

SCT

AHHHHHHHHH!!! Relaxed state.

If it's possible to make a tournament easy, it was pulled off this weekend. Big thanks to the CWRU crew for pulling it off, and all those who came in to help out. I like tournaments that run efficiently and ahead of schedule, and we got both. In fact, the only thing that was really bad about it was that we had room and staff for additional teams, but we(NAQT) couldn't pull that.

The especially good sign was that NAQT pulled in something like 18 new schools (Not counting the CC's which I have to check last year's list to this year's.) Now the battle is to get them to stay in touch with the circuit. And for the circuit to stay in touch with them.

I won't say that they were the best questions NAQT has ever done (I reserve that for some of the old '97-'98 era IMs, which still blow my mind) but it was in that range. Avoiding needless obscurity, remaining squarely among approachable answers, while still providing enough challenge to teams to differentiate all along the line from top to bottom. While that isn't exactly what everyone wants out of quiz bowl, when you get down to it, it's what 95% want (or 95% of what people want), and the remaining 5% wouldn't be happy unless what you did was what more than 5% of the remainder didn't want, and well, you gotta choose somewhere. And the side of the angels isn't a bad choice.

Two odd bits from the job:
1. I spent the better part of the afternoon in a meeting where the next three years of strategy were laid out. Assuming I stay in the job that long it will be interesting. I found it difficult to follow the lecture, given the fact that the guy giving the briefing was wearing a button with our new marketing slogan. So help me if I ever get marked down in my job for not wearing sufficient 'flair', I am taking a flamethrower to Fort Multi.

2. Following the meeting my boss's boss brought me in for a pre-job-performance-review review, whereupon it was insinuated that I'd be the perfect guy in testing for a task. That task being monitoring all bugs as they come in and making sure none of them get lost in the shuffle of development. My immediate thought was something that would only cost about $35 to implement. Assuming they give me the task, I'm going to implement the whiteboard from Homicide: Life on the Street.

Friday, February 07, 2003

Two slightly longer bits, notes on the day job.

1. On Tuesday we announced that we acquired another company, whose products have a tight resemblence to the product I currently test. This makes my next couple months at the office even more intriguing, as we now take all the stuff they wanted to put in at 8.0, and add in a mad rush to incorporate their stuff, so the acquisition looks justified. Fun, fun, fun.

2. The eXtreme Programming group has had a breakthrough, no not a major improvement in software. They broke through the Maginot line and will be taking over my row of cubes. This does have the feel of a situation where we aren't more efficient in the new method, so we need more people to do the job so they're more efficient. I'm still working out whether that's just paradoxical on the surface, or fraught to the core. I however, will not be involved. No, they're shipping me out to the other end of the building, along with the developers I work with. They're putting us in a ring of cubicles with the entrances facing inward. The fact that this resembles a walled city designed to keep the rest of the company at bay is purely coincidental. More news on this when I move into Fort Multiphysics, The Bronx.

Thursday, February 06, 2003

Two little bits.
1. Re: Phil Spector. It's a sign of how insidious the whole SNL meme was, not to mention how warped I am, but am I the only one who went "you know, if she had just given him more cowbell..."
2. Speaking of Max Zorin and May Day
S'Anyway, during a television induced vegetative state, I recently caught the ad for the Pavarotti & Friends concert. What planet are we living on when GRACE JONES is the second headliner in the ad, ahead of, among others, James Brown? And why, from the ads, does she appear to be wearing a skatepark ramp, or possibly the Rhino Liner for a skatepark ramp. While these questions will likely haunt me, I don't think I can be brought to spring for pay-per-view for the answers.

(NOTE: I wrote the original version of this document as a guide for moderators. The version here, slightly modified from mine, was sent out to NAQT SCT hosts for this weekend. I would expect it also to appear soon on the NAQT website.)

Moderating is a difficult task, even for the most experienced moderators. This is because people who discuss the game naturally focus on faults rather than quality, and also because the moderator is responsible for a smoothly-run, fairly-adjudicated match. Quality moderation prevents problems, yet often goes unnoticed. Substandard moderation can lead to disaster. This is a primer that may be useful to both new and experienced readers. Quality moderation requires work but it allows good questions to shine and gives teams the best chance to perform.

Be ConfidentA moderator who lacks confidence will not be a good moderator.

If you fear making a mistake then you WILL make a mistake. Be familiar with all match procedures before the match begins. Tournament directors should provide all readers with a copy of the rules and hold a moderators' meeting to discuss the rules. At minimum, the moderator should know all rules for recognition, prompting, and timing (how long a player has to give a tossup answer, single bonus answer, list, etc.). A reader who knows the rules and is unafraid to use them will control the room. Moderation is public speaking; controlling the room leads to success.

Balance Speed and ClarityA moderator must read as quickly as he or she can, without sacrificing clarity.

An unintelligible reader is as bad as an unreadable packet. One should not stop and start within a question, lest a player mistake a pause for an important clue. Take note of the groups of words that come after what you are reciting, to preserve the question's natural cadence, grammar, rhythm, and intent. Consistent, free-flowing speech will make the question easy to understand.

Your voice should fill the room. This may demand a slight (note: only a slight) increase from your natural speaking volume. Practice will allow you to determine your appropriate volume. You should not need to yell, nor should your voice be labored. (A good tournament will have at least eight rounds; your vocal chords won't last three rounds of yelling.)

Time Your BreathThe secret of quality moderation is to modulate breathing.

Breathe at the end of sentences or just before the scoring instruction. For NAQT questions, the goal of a good reader should be a two-breath tossup. Inhale before the first word and before the phrase, "for 10 points." Longer questions may require more breath -- writers should remember this and keep questions compact, lest readers collapse from lightheadedness.

Position Yourself to ProjectThe moderator should position himself so that his voice projects equally well to all teams.

Keep the questions away from your mouth when you read. Paper blocks sound from your mouth and may accidentally reveal upcoming questions (if the printout is double-sided). If you have the energy and resources, stand up and put the questions on a desk or podium.

Separate tossups and bonuses; switching between two stacks of paper is quicker than flipping within a single stapled or bound stack.

Ideally, a reader should be calm, authoritative, and stoic. Do not make excuses, provide an opinion, or otherwise interject. React, but do not opine. Be solid and players will have confidence in your competence. Leave opinions outside the match.

Be Assertive and BriefEven if the match you read is not timed, the tournament is still on the clock.

Every syllable you say in a match should be part of the question or absolutely necessary. Use tight language to give point values (e.g. "5," "10," or "15," not "power 15" or "5 point penalty, I'll continue for the other team"). For bonuses, just give the correct answer after each part (if the team's answer is correct, just go on to the next part) and announce the points scored at the end of the bonus. At the highest levels of play, a moderator never needs to say the word "Correct.", while with novice players, this can be helpful. If playing with power tossups, NEVER indicate how close a player was to the power mark. While a moderator should aim for terseness and brevity at the highest levels of play (the ICT and HS NCT, for instance), a moderator can take a little time at lower levels of play (especially with newer and inexperienced teams) to indicate correct answers and the like.

Beyond these directions, moderating is intuitive. If you combine these directions with confidence, common sense, and equity, your reading will bring an excellent event to the teams that play in your room. If you have any questions or would like to make suggestions for improving this document, please E-mail us at feedback@naqt.com

Monday, February 03, 2003

Greg is now quoting me. Color me honored, if slightly disturbed by this, given it was just a throwaway line. However, I should have noted that last week Dave Barry actually WAS fraught with puppies!

Okay, now all the stuff I had loaded up and was going to do this weekend:

1. Finally remembered to watch Jimmy Kimmel Live. I feared that with that much writing talent it could either go '27 Yankees, or '02 Rangers, and if Friday was the typical night, I lean towards the latter. I also had seen this, which basically screamed buzzkill. (The one thing it has done is really expand the language of whatever medium it's covered in, ever see "puked" in a wire story headline before? Between that and Snoop introducing network censors to the conundrum "Do we let 'cockblock' slide?", they're really doing some amazing stuff.)

2. Saw the premiere of Dragnet, mildly impressed, since I worried (based on the ads) that they were going to have Ed O'Neill turn Joe Friday into Psycho Dad. They didn't do that, but the Dick Wolf crew really did just cement the whole Law and Order: Los Angeles vibe. Which I guess is fair, if you work backwards, the bumpers in L&O: Original Recipe were just a revision of Jack Webb doing voiceover scene intro. If they can just remember that Joe Friday is not Lenny Briscoe, we'll be fine.

3. Who ordered this? No, seriously, somebody's paying for this, I once claimed in a tossup that the cancellation of this show was the ultimate death of disco (1987, yeah, freaky ain't it), and now we're going to have to go take Buffy and drive a stake through this undead revival?!? Nothing good about this, and it's even going to be worse than the original. A quote:
"It's just going to be a huge, splashy competition featuring phenomenal dancing," Nash said. "It will be very sexy and highly entertaining and include the personal stories which will make you root for them to win or lose." Disco meets bad Olympic coverage.... Amazing, something on ABC/Fox/Family Channel/CBN that would actually cause me to wish they had the 700 Club on.

4. Pitt basketball manages to whiff it again. The fact that this is twice now they were sitting at #2, #1 lost and then they did is starting to make the local media smell choking. We'll see. Though one more time of it, and it's going to probably start to stick.

5. I didn't really like Snood but I understood why people liked it, in a similar vein to something written here, but I've found myself badly hooked on a similar game at gamehouse, Pileup.

6. Mark's post on the North Shore Spirit got me poking around the Northeast League site, and I have to say, I may actually be in favor of a small amount of revisionist history. Anything to get this history of the league to sound even mildly promotionally minded.(also notable for its prominent mention, okay, mere mention of former Pirate farmhand Trey Beamon) Normally something like this would be designed to encourage people to come, but with its constant mention of the leagues failures and franchise movement, I'm feeling bitter, and I've got no stake in the matter.

7. No matter your politics, you can always mock the French. And this is quality mocking. And for those of you in quizbowl, a handy set of background links.

8. Today I discovered a piece of software that I'm having to work with requires a compiler be present on the same box during installation. Should I scream at the manufacturer for not realizing this little flaw in the process?

9. In line with the coffee house stupidity tax (third item on this page). Last Thursday night, I stopped by a new Starbucks (now with drive-thru, which prompted a nice WTF? look as I explained it to Joe) Ordered small tea, gave the guy a bag of Chai tea from their little rack of teabags in front of the register. I then took the tea, walked over to the dispensers, added milk and sugar to my taste. Now, in this exchange I basically saved about $1.50. Am I thus: (a) an ass, (b) a cheapskate, (c) totally justified? I think all three.

Sunday, February 02, 2003

I missed it live. Unlike Challenger, which I got to see because of a snow day, I had to have the news broken to me over a phone call. It's especially a gut shot for me. Here's the thing, my job, my day job, is preventing this sort of thing. They use software to know if these things will be safe, and I help make that kind of software. I am always quietly amazed at the shuttle, or airplanes, or a nuclear plant, because I know how many things can go wrong, and how little it takes for it all to go wrong. (I've worked on the latter two, it wouldn't surprise me if some of the software I work on now didn't have some impact on shuttle design, even something as lowly as a push button.) But it's exactly knowing that that gives me the faith that we will go on. I don't fear flying, I don't fear nuclear power, and I wouldn't fear going in a shuttle. I know each has been dissected a hundred times by engineers better than myself. They minimize the risk as best anyone can.

What I do fear is that this may make us timid. The spectre of risk has always been there, that is the very nature of exploration and research. It is only that the risk is visible and tangible today. Seven people went up, knowing those risks, better than any of us will ever know. They weren't the first, they won't be the last.